


penrose steps

by kalachuchi



Category: SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Ambiguous Relationships, Gen, M/M, Reverse Chronology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-05-21
Packaged: 2019-05-09 18:38:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14721470
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalachuchi/pseuds/kalachuchi
Summary: Junhui runs a restaurant. Chan runs.





	penrose steps

**2024**

 

“ – I’ve always wanted to,” Junhui is saying, “I think I’d really like it.”

The saucepan whistles from the stovetop, a caution neither of them pay any mind. But steam is slipping through the space where Junhui hadn’t sealed the lid properly, so Chan moves to fix it, clearing his throat as he does. 

Junhui is still talking, but Junhui’s just like that – as self-sufficient as he trusting of the people around him. Chan’s habit of visibly filling in the blanks surrounding Junhui is no longer the conscious decision it used to be, muscle memory paving a path as familiar as Junhui’s hand reaching to ruffle Chan’s hair in thanks, a journey shorter than it once was. Chan’s grown a lot, these days. 

Beneath the saucepan lid, the milk tea starts to bubble. 

“Hyung,” Chan begins, stepping back from the stovetop to reach for mugs. Steam curls around Junhui’s face as he lifts the saucepan lid to strain the tea into the mugs, features blurring almost into someone else, unrecognisable. Vernon’s voice rings low in Chan’s ears, remembered from far away: _Where there’s smoke, there’s fire._

In the present, Chan says, “You don’t have to do all this, just – thanks. For letting me visit.”

“I like when Channie visits,” Junhui hums. “It’s fun when everyone’s around.”

They lapse into silence as they sip their tea, but it’s not quiet, the bustle of Junhui’s restaurant lapping against the walls in waves. Chan has stopped reminding Junhui he doesn’t mind staying in the main room with all the other customers, so Junhui learned to stop pointing out how everyone will look at them if they do. 

And here they are. The break room next to the kitchen is their compromise, which is the polite way of saying Junhui insisted until Chan caved in, and everyone says Junhui is a good listener when really the only thing Junhui is better at than listening is being stubborn. 

“Your schedule must be busy these days,” Chan argues.

Junhui agrees. “Yet here you are, having milk tea with me.”

Junhui’s phone rings, shaking the table slightly. 

Junhui makes no attempt to answer it. Chan shifts in his seat, restless but not uncomfortable. He wonders who Junhui’s giving up to talk to him. Chinese characters blink from the screen, familiar enough that Chan feels he should know them, though he never did learn how to read. 

“Your movie,” Chan says. “Are they not giving you a stunt double or anything?”

“If they think I need it, maybe.”

Junhui has as much martial arts experience as any stuntman. 

Chan laughs. “I’d need one for sure if it was me, then.”

“No, I’d definitely tutor you,” Junhui smiles, before pausing. “Ah, but. I guess you’d rather not… Not be coddled, or anything, right. Ha ha.”

Chan had laughed without thinking about it, but it’s obvious Junhui is thinking about it as he laughs now. _Ha ha,_ punctuated, a full stop instead of a continuation. Junhui won’t look back at him when Chan stares, concentrating on swirling tea around in his mug.

The last twenty minutes feel almost like a dream, a circular conversation Chan doesn’t remember starting or finishing, running endlessly into this tiny room in this tiny restaurant where nothing happens in particular. 

_Like a dream._ Minghao described the restaurant like that, when Junhui first opened it. _Of course you think so,_ Mingyu scoffed, _you helped decorate it._ Chan still remembers the soft, satisfied sound Minghao made in response, and how he hadn’t disagreed. 

Chan sips at his tea until warmed ceramic is all his mouth tastes. 

Then the phone rings again, and the dream disperses. 

“You should answer,” Chan says, standing up. “Someone really wants to talk to you.”

Junhui says, quiet, “It’s been a long time since you were here, though,” but he’s reaching for his phone anyway. Chan pretends not to listen as he rinses his mug in the sink, then Junhui’s for good measure.

When he turns to face Junhui again, Chan mouths, “Let’s talk tomorrow, okay?” 

Junhui frowns, gesturing toward Chan in a way that Chan doesn’t try to interpret before he leaves. 

 

 

Minghao is a lot less sentimental over the phone. Privately, Chan prefers it that way. No need to indulge or accomodate others the way he would around a camera. 

“You need to go see Junnie,” Minghao informs him. 

It doesn’t stop Minghao from seeing right through him anyway. Chan closes his eyes, rubbing at his temples. Beneath all the drive and the daydreaming, Minghao at full concentration is even more confronting than a camera lens. Focused on all the places you’d rather not reveal to the world.

Chan sighs. “He’s flying out tomorrow evening.”

“You knew.”

Of course Chan knows. Junhui announces everything to everyone on their group chat.

“What do you want me to tell you, hyung.”

“I don’t want you to tell me anything,” Minghao snaps. Gentler, Minghao adds, “But you need to see him before he leaves.”

There’s a running joke in the group, and it goes like this: despite or because of Mingyu’s chronic complaints, he continues to be everyone’s minder. Soonyoung and Wonwoo have a running bet on how many set phrases Mingyu keeps stored in his phone to send at all times – S _end your clothes to laundromat, Don’t forget clothes AT laundromat, Lock door and leave spare key at front desk before schedules._

So Mingyu’s a nag. But he doesn’t force issues on others, either, not the way Minghao does. Minghao is bossy and determined to be right, vigilante to Mingyu’s cardboard cut-out hero. Still…

“This isn’t a movie, hyung, there’s no – sometimes things are just the way are.”

Minghao snorts. “What does that make you, sulking like a kicked puppy.”

“I do _not –,”_ Chan begins, but Minghao interrupts him. “You don’t even have a sob story, Chan-ah.”

Ironically, the urge to argue and throw tantrums at the others only increased as Chan grew older. This is the impulse Chan will blame later when he says, “Jun-hyung would be mad at you lecturing me about him.”

Minghao inhales sharply. Chan feels immediately guilty.

Junhui and Minghao, on paper, aren’t people that should fit together. But it never stopped them from trying, and in the end Junhui is to Minghao the present a relative felt obligated to gift you on your birthday: not necessarily what you wanted, but still above reproach or rebuke from anyone else.

“I’m sorry,” Chan says.

“No,” Minghao says. “You’re right. You’re right, but Junnie wouldn’t be mad at you for going to see him.”

Of course he wouldn’t. It’s probably why Minghao even bothered stepping in. For someone so indecisive, Junhui is surprisingly set in the way he sees things: this or that, heroes or villains, distance but not absence, not anymore – 

Chan stops the thought before it solidifies, redirects instead to an image of Junhui in the lead role he’s casted for. One of the good guys in a wuxia film, likely the next trending heartbreaker on Weibo. Except, Junhui has always wanted to try playing the bad guy, and Chan wonders where that’s supposed to leave him.

Chan swallows, as if he’s confessing to a crime. “I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

Minghao sounds amused again. “Don’t make it even longer, then.”

 

 

Junhui’s restaurant, a hotpot place called _A Gentle Heat –_ which should sound dirty but somehow doesn’t – is cozy. The interior is all wooden finishes and warm tones, cushions scattered across the table seating and waiting area, soft enough to really sink your weight into. 

_These cushions are a huge safety hazard,_ Mingyu declared when Junhui asked around for decorating suggestions. _They’re comfy,_ Junhui offered, _and I would enjoy sitting on them._ Mingyu had huffed  –  _hah! –_ and ordered another two dozen online on the spot.

Said cushions are currently scattered across the floor, tables stacked and cleared away, flooring freshly vacuumed and spotless enough to squeak under their shoes.

“Why clean if we’re just making a mess after,” Seungkwan says, as if he isn’t sprawled out like a starfish across the bulk of the cushions. 

Chan grins. “Post-cleaning party, duh.”

“Agreed,” Junhui chimes in.

Grabbing a spare cushion, Chan smacks whichever part of Seungkwan he’s closest to – his leg. Seungkwan dodges, leg neatly twisting to send the cushion flying towards Chan’s face. Junhui laughs, curled on his side to watch them.

On the table behind him is a spread of various bite-sized pastries, Junhui’s personal contribution to the restaurant menu. Thirteen flavour variations, Junhui’s cutesy gimmick for Carats dropping by. Currently, they’re snacks for whenever the others arrive, _A Gentle Heat’s_ opening party pushed back to two weeks after the fact after working around everyone’s schedules.

“So, Jun-hyung.” Seungkwan rolls over to Junhui. He taps Junhui’s nose the way you tap a microphone before speaking. “How do you feel, Mr. Proud-Hotpot-Restaurant-Owner?”

Junhui beams. “Ah, firstly, I couldn’t have done it without–,” “The members!” Chan slides in. 

“– Our _carats_ ,” Junhui finishes, pointedly.

“Acceptable,” Chan relents. Seungkwan laughs, “Well said, Jun – oh, Channie, don’t do that, your face right now looks _so…_ ”

Junhui leans over Seungkwan to peek at Chan, and whatever he finds there sends him spiralling back against the cushions, wheezing. Chan can hear even without looking, can imagine precisely the way laughter curves Junhui’s whole face softer, younger. 

Seungkwan is still staring at Chan, though the look on his face now is unreadable. Schooling his own expression back into an easy smile, Chan adds, “Wow. Aren’t you funny, hyung.”

Still between them, Seungkwan rolls onto his back, rolling his eyes. Chan’s smile is fixed firmly in place. Junhui makes a light, airy noise, expression caught between three different directions of thought at once. 

He doesn’t have to smile for Chan to look at him. Sometimes it’s the only way he can.

Junhui’s been smiling more often than not since opening the restaurant. It’s a tiny, hole in the wall place between the company and Soonyoung’s dance studio that shouldn’t make any money but does. 

“Dude, are those Jun-hyung’s studio snacks?”” Vernon’s voice drifts into the room.Then Joshua, stretching out his greetings: “What’s _up,_ guys.” Chan hadn’t noticed either of them walk in. 

“Is everyone hungry?” Junhui sits up, heading over to the food. “You guys should eat, we’re not trying to wait or anything…”

Studio snacks, indeed.

In his free time Junhui has taken to visiting the studio, where he helps Minghao run through choreography, well-versed in translating Minghao’s mannerisms into movement. Moreover, Chan suspects every other studio visit Junhui makes in the name of snack delivery is to ensure none of them overwork themselves. Chan suspects this in the same way he knows Minghao adds Junhui’s name to choreography copyrights despite Junhui never asking.

_Just say you like feeding him_ , Chan doesn’t tell him. Lets them circle each other instead in whatever unspoken agreement they’ve managed to make functional, close enough to remain in each other’s orbit, far enough to avoid any chance of collision.

Junhui, now leaning over him, calls. “Channie, Channie – Chan-ah?”

Chan blinks up at him. With one hand, Junhui is holding out a tiny pastry. His other is hovering uncertainly between himself and Chan, deciding whether to pull Chan up or feel his forehead for a temperature. But Chan’s fine. As fine as he’s always been.

The others are all starting to drop in, now, and Junhui’s hand is close enough to leave Chan crosseyed for trying to follow when he hears Minghao ask, “Is Chan okay?”

“I”m good,” Chan says. He nudges Junhui’s hand back to his side, accepting the pastry to shove in his mouth. “ ’S good, too.”

Junhui smiles, relieved. Minghao narrows his eyes, and Chan feels caught for something he hasn’t done, ready to run at the first opening.

Chan runs, Minghao chases. And elsewhere is Junhui, just close enough to remain in orbit, far enough to avoid getting sucked in. 

This is how it is. 

“That’s good,” Minghao says slowly.

Junhui, addressing the room at large: “Eat, eat, everyone eat lots, okay?”

And there’s the opening. Chan runs.

 

 

A red light at the crossing makes Chan stop, considering. To his left: a cafe he frequents often enough that calling a manager-hyung to pick him up there would be easy. To his right…to his right.

The restaurant isn’t open yet, but Junhui must be there right now, getting things ready. Perhaps working harder when nobody can see than he does when everybody’s watching, the kind of unseemly effort that leaves the finished product for everyone to witness so worth watching. But Chan’s no stronger to effort or unseemliness, so he’s resolved. To the right.

Green light for the pedestrian crossing. So Chan walks, looking both ways before he crosses the street. Hood low and hands shoved in pockets, purpose shifts his walk down a familiar road into a stranger’s journey into a new town.

Seungcheol is walking towards him, heading for the crossing from the direction of the restaurant. Chan recognises him by his stance, the way he walks as if he belongs. He hasn’t noticed Chan yet. There’s a small bag at Seungcheol’s side, tied together neatly but clumsily.

Wind rushes through him, stinging past his hoodie, all the layers underneath. 

“Chan? Stopping by Junnie’s too?” Seungcheol must be feeling indulgent today; Chan can see the crow’s nests at Seungcheol’s eyes when he smiles even with Chan's hood pulled low, Seungcheol’s muffler wrapped high, covering most of his face.

“Sure, hyung.”

The crow’s nests rustle. Seungcheol says something else, stifled by the muffler. It sounds a little like _––– make him happy._ He squeezes Chan’s shoulder as he passes by, and the cold means Chan doesn’t have to materialise a story for the stiff set of his shoulders.

Lights glow behind the blinds, pulled low over the windows at Junhui’s restaurant, tucked between a music store and a bookshop. The door isn’t locked, though, swinging slightly where someone’s left a doorstopper on the wrong side of the door.

Chan keeps walking.

 

 

**2020**

 

When the door shuts behind Junhui, Minghao follows. 

“Jun-ah, Myungho,” Seungcheol calls after them, fishing his phone out of his pocket when Mingyu rests a hand over Seungcheol’s screen to stop him. “Leave it, hyung.”

“Don’t involve yourself.” 

Mingyu laughs, grating. “And what are you doing? Myungho wouldn’t fly off the handle for nothing.”

Except he would, if it was for someone else. Chan knows this. Mingyu knows this. Neither of them say anything to Seungcheol. 

Not that this is Seungcheol’s fault, in any way. He just did the right thing at the wrong time: interrupting what he presumed was a fight, which summoned Mingyu and Minghao and, well.

Poised between the two of them and the door, Chan feels both trapped by, and removed from, the situation. Like watching a bottleneck form without knowing which direction, precisely, the bottleneck was clustering towards.

Mingyu keeps his gaze steady, levelled at Seungcheol, who turns to Chan before he breathes out, shoulders sagging.

“Channie,” Seungcheol says. He sounds tired. “What happened here.”

“It’s – .” _Not_ nothing, and Seungcheol eyes him, as if daring him to try it. 

So maybe Seungcheol wants to hear that it was _something_. Chan can admit that, so long as Seungcheol doesn’t pry deeper, attempt to clarify.

“Coups-hyung, really, it’s not bad. Just – stubbornness we should’ve left in the studio, is all.”

The stage name relieves and alarms Seungcheol, and Dino bites on the temptation to laugh, watching three alternate shades of stress flicker across Seungcheol’s face.

“Just a practice disagreement,” Seungcheol says, faintly, almost unwilling to accept it could be so simple. Mingyu slides his focus to Chan, but Chan can deal with Mingyu’s suspicion. Between Mingyu and Minghao, Mingyu is louder but easily more straightforward to navigate. 

_Xiao Hao thinks I should’ve started asking for acting schedules before,_ Junhui told Chan, once. _But I don’t mind waiting, and besides, it’s not waiting when there’s lots to do instead._

Chan doesn’t remember ever hearing Minghao tell Junhui any of this, but he knows why he did – Junhui substituting _instead_ as if it’s somehow synonymous with _before._ Junhui’s quietly learned habit of prioritising what he assumes is needed of him over what he knows he wants from himself. 

“Since you’re sure, then.” It’s not a question, but Mingyu makes it sound like one when he says it.

“Hyung, there’s nothing to own up to.” Chan meets Mingyu’s eyes, then Seungcheol. He sounds like he means it, to his own ears. “Really.”

But even if there was– even if there was–

“Who’s owning up to what?”

Soonyoung, stumbling sleepily into the apartment, blinking at the three of them.

Seungcheol sighs. “Soon-ah, when’s the last time you slept.”

Soonyoung thinks. “In the next five minutes?”

“Thank you,” Seungcheol says. Mingyu says, “God, alright.”

– and maybe Chan doesn’t owe Junhui a defence, or an apology, but he thinks even if he did, they were both urges he tried to give away a long time ago.

 

 

“Do you ever think about it? – Dating, I mean.”

Junhui rolls over, peering down at Chan from the top bunk.

“Are you in love with someone, Channie?”

“No.” Chan pauses. “Anyway, you don’t need to be in love to date, right..?”

Chan can hear Junhui smile in the dark.

“You don’t need to date to be in love, either. But! To answer your question – No. No, I don’t think I have, really.”

The end of Junhui’s response is muffled, Junhui turning over to find a more comfortable position. Imagining Junhui tangling himself into cloud-patterned bedding makes Chan laugh a little, breathy. 

From their nightstand, the lamp shines on the alarm clock, clock hands informing Chan it’s currently _3:21._ They need to be up in less than three hours. They should’ve gone to sleep three hours earlier. 

Chan hums, solidifying his thoughts, and Junhui doesn’t rush him.

“So what happens then. To all the love you don’t date away.”

“I wouldn’t want to date my feelings away, Chan-ah,” Junhui laughs. “But I don’t think I’m the best person to ask about any of this, either.”

But what if you were, Chan doesn’t say. What if you were the only person to ask – he doesn’t allow himself to finish the thought.

Junhui is still talking. “Still. I don’t… I think whether or not you say it or give it away, just feeling it might be enough? Something like that. I don’t know. I think I’d be scared to find out who cares most.”

To be the one who cares most. 

And maybe that’s what it is, in the end. Chan wouldn’t say he dates away his love so much as he’d rather date his way _into_ love. Maybe, for him, it’s less a matter of meaning or wanting or asking as it is simply mirroring. 

“Chan? Are you still awake?”

Not like Junhui, floaty and buoyed inside his own head, cushioning his heart in a cloud of would’s, could’s, and if’s. The difference between wanting and hoping as indistinct as the texture of a cloud when the sun shines through it.

“…I guess not, huh.”

And maybe what Chan wants is the breadth of the feeling, momentum hurtling his heart onwards, when all Junhui considers is depth, a gradual ascent upwards. Maybe what Chan wanted is the answer to a question Junhui wouldn’t let himself hear.

Chan thinks, _You’re so stupid,_ and doesn’t know who he’s referring to. As if either of them have the time or space to figure it out.

“Hyung,” Chan breathes.

Junhui turns over in his blankets again, clouds turning themselves in and out. “Yes?”

Maybe what Chan needs is more sunlight, is all.

“Nothing. Can I turn the lamp off now?”

**Author's Note:**

> The Penrose stairs or Penrose steps, also dubbed the impossible staircase, is an impossible object created by Lionel Penrose and his son Roger Penrose. A variation on the Penrose triangle, it is a two-dimensional depiction of a staircase in which the stairs make four 90-degree turns as they ascend or descend yet form a continuous loop, so that a person could climb them forever and never get any higher.


End file.
